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How Can You Fix My Computer Over the Internet?

by Dennis Faas on October, 9 2014 at 01:10PM EDT

Infopackets Reader 'Nurse Lynda' writes:

" Dear Dennis,

Thanks so much for fixing my computer [over the Internet] - it's amazing to see you work ... you sure know your stuff! ... [I have a question]: I have recommended your 'Remote Desktop Support' services to my friends on Facebook, but they don't understand how [you can fix my computer over the Internet]? Specifically, they are asking what is the meaning of 'Remote' Desktop Support? I've tried to explain, but they just don't understand it. Do you have a page explaining this? "

My response:

Thanks for your email.

When I tell acquaintances that I provide "Remote Desktop Support" through my website (Infopackets), they often stare back at me with a strange look on their face. In other words, you're not the only one asking what it means. To be honest, it's not an easy question to answer because it's a relatively new concept. At this time, I don't have a page that explains it in detail, so I've decided to put this article together to shed some light on the subject.

First, What is "Remote Desktop Support"?

In the most basic terms, Remote Desktop Support means that I provide 1-on-1 technical support for you (and your PC) over the Internet. Essentially, I can see what you see on your desktop; I can interact with you and your computer in order to help you resolve problems. Using the Remote Desktop Software, I am able move your mouse (using my mouse), and input keys (using my keyboard) - just like I was right there, using your computer.

To best explain the process, let's use an analogy.

Remote Desktop Support -- Similar to a Doctor Visiting a Patient

Back in the old days, if you were very sick, you could call the Doctor to have him come to your house for a visit. When the doctor arrives on your doorstep, you unlock the door and let him in. Once inside the home, the doctor examines you and then provides advice or a prescription for medicine.

The Remote Desktop Support service I provide works in a similar manner. Instead of driving to your home, I 'travel' to your computer at light-speed through the Internet. In order to let me into your home (the computer), I give you a special pass code (example: 1FN23). Once you enter the pass code correctly (via our website), I am then able to connect to your computer. It's that simple.

Once connected, I can view your desktop just as you see it. Each support session begins with a series of questions; we can communicate using instant messages (by typing on the keyboard to one another), or through a web camera or microphone. Essentially: you are able to speak with me at the same time you're using the computer, and I can see everything that you're seeing and doing. It's like I'm in the same room as you, helping to resolve your problem. I then provide you with advice and a solution.

Remote Desktop Support vs Computer Store and On-Site Support

There are many ways to fix a computer. To illustrate how my services work, I'll compare it to similar services offered by a typical computer store, and those offered by mobile "on-site" support (such as Geek Squad, Nerds on Site, etc), where a technician comes to your house and fixes your computer.

First and foremost: I provide unparalleled, personal 1-on-1 support for my customers. When we are connected, you have my undivided attention and you can ask me anything. You can show me the problem you're having, and I'll use my 30 years of computing experience to help provide you with the best possible solution. Most stores simply don't offer this level of support. If you use mobile "on-site" support, then there's a fee to have someone come to your house.

Secondly: the services I provide are fast, convenient, and safe. I can connect to you instantly and begin solving problems right away. There's no need to take your PC to a computer store, or wait for a technician to arrive at your home. The service I provide is safe because it's done in the comfort of your own home and on your terms, and without letting strangers in.

Third: there's less overhead involved -- which means there are substantial savings I can pass on to you. Some computer repair shops charge a diagnostic fee just to look at your problem, then another fee to fix it. Those fees can add up fast and cost a lot of money! Mobile "on-site" support also has additional costs, because there is transportation involved. In either case, you may or may not know who's working on your computer or their credentials. On the other hand, my reputation and credentials speak for themselves.

Fourth: my pricing structure makes my services very affordable. If it's an easy fix, it will cost you as little as $30
for 30 minutes of my time. 'Medium' size problems cost only $60 to fix
(if it takes 1 to 1.5 hours of my time), and super time consuming projects (more
than 2 hours, up to 1-2 days) will have the rate capped at 2 hours, which is
$120. For business / super-high priorities / ultra complex issues, pricing is by
the hour, quoted in blocks of time.

Remote Desktop Support Caveats

There are some limitations to using Remote Desktop Support, however. I can only provide the service if your computer is turned on, Windows is running, and it has a reliable Internet connection. If you can't boot into Windows or don't have an Internet connection, then unfortunately, I won't be able to serve you. In that case, you would need to use a repair store or "on-site" support.

That said: if you live in the Windsor, Ontario area, I do offer on-site support, but the pricing structure is different.

I hope this helps to shed some light on the subject.

About the author: Dennis Faas is the owner and operator of Infopackets.com. With over 30 years of computing experience, Dennis' areas of expertise are a broad range and include PC hardware, Microsoft Windows, Linux, network administration, and virtualization. Dennis holds a Bachelors degree in Computer Science (1999) and has authored 6 books on the topics of MS Windows and PC Security. If you like the advice you received on this page, please up-vote / Like this page and share it with friends. For technical support inquiries, Dennis can be reached via Live chat online this site using the Zopim Chat service (currently located at the bottom left of the screen); optionally, you can contact Dennis through the website contact form.

I am surprised no other company has thought of this. we have been using remote access for other reasons but not for PC service.... very surprised and happy, saving so much time, travelling etc. and would be awesome for people in the outback or not close to a technician. :) Thanks heaps for thinking of this and making it available .. Cludos :)

Well, I put my money where my mouth was and can recommend Dennis [ I have had experience in the PC industry in various areas since 1964 and have had experience in doing small repairs in my desktop - eg, replacing / upgrading ram, or hard drive, video cards ]

Dennis kindly checked both my laptop and netbook, all the way down under in oz... I live in a remote area and it was great to see him check and clean up both units. I was awake for part of the time and worked away on other things, then eventually went to bed and slept while Dennis kept working.

I woke up next morning to find my first unit running better than it has for a long time. Dennis also gave me tips on how to get better performance with ssd drive, and also how to install the drive myself to save money.

Saved me a lot of time and expense traveling 60 km each way and then waiting a few weeks to get the work done.

Thank you Dennis, I appreciate a job well done..

Janina

PS. I'm just waiting for the SSD drive to arrive and watched the video on how to install the hd. I think i can manage that. Thanks for saving me a lot of money and time :)

Dennis is about the best you can hope for, honest, extremely knowledgeable, patient, never lets you feel dumb or incompetent, even though you don't know 100TH of what he does. This is the GOLD standard in support, you cannot hope for better, except for affordable which he is very much so.
T H A N K S DENNIS!!!!!!!!!!!!

I could not get my computer to go to a login screen because it was stuck on 1 of 3 windows update. I tried everything that I knew to do & nothing worked. Then I was going through my email on my laptop & I came across Dennis email & seen where you could ask him a question so thats what I did. He got back with me right away & helped me get back online. It was a very easy fix thanks to Dennis. I would highly recommend him to solve problems with your computer. He also kept checking back with me to make sure everything was going ok after I got it fixed. I would have had to do a complete install if it wasn't for Dennis. Thank you very much Dennis for all your help!

Dennis did a great job cleaning my laptop, and I learned that it is a very good laptop and I can add up to 8 GB of memory to it, which I plan to do in the new year. Like someone said earlier, he never made me feel stupid, even though I am certainly not a techie!! I have, and will, recommend him to my family and friends. He is very affordable too!

If you’ve ever seen “Analyze This” with Robert De Niro and Billy Crystal, you’ll remember that De Niro plays a mafia boss who goes to a psychiatrist, played by Billy Crystal (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analyze_This), ala The Sopranos. At the end, when De Niro is in prison and his problems solved through violent crashing events that they both have miraculously survived, after a short goodbye meeting with Crystal at the prison where De Niro is serving his sentence, walking away to his cell, De Niro turns back to Crystal, points his finger at Crystal and says, “You’re good!”, and when Crystal nods modestly, refusing to accept any great compliment and more or less dismissing his own role, De Niro says, shaking his finger at Crystal, “No, you’re good! You are good!!”
I don’t know a better story to tell about Dennis’ work. He’s that good. I hope I never again have such a difficult and intermittent problem that no one else can analyze, but if I ever do I’m just glad that Dennis will be available to help. Having that is alone worth the price of admission. He’s that good. I could go on, but you will hopefully have your own experience with Dennis, and if you do I’m sure it will be as good as mine. Thanks, Dennis, you are good!!

Actually, the concept of remote assistance is quite old. It was a great idea that never took off like it should have.
Years ago we had a WebTV set (before we graduated to desktop pcs). At one time our WebTV performance bogged down so bad we could hardly do anything with it. We called on the phone to their support service and watched on our TV while their tech person made changes to the system. It was an absolutely amazing thing to see. Our WebTV had gotten so bogged down with ads and when the tech guy removed them everything was great again. Congratulations Dennis, for taking this up. I will definitely contact you the next time I need help.
Elsie V.

Dear Dennis,
Win10 again,
If I opt in on automatic Win10 download (which I intend)& it becomes Vista-Re-visit or worse, Can I easily Remove & re-install my Win7Pro system backup using Acronis or Aomie back-upper?
I have both on separate external hard drive for my laptop.
Also, if the install (Win10) goes totally hay-wire, is MS going to fix it?
Thanks, Glenn Thomas

Hi Dennis... this is Sreenu, Hope and trusting you will provide solution for my problem.

We have Hp Workstations and every system has two hard disks one is for Windows and another for Linux(Suse).

We have installed windows and Suse successfully dualbooting working fine.. for data security purpose we have taken backup for all the systems using "Acronis true image 2014". When we try to deploy it on another workstation(same configuration)we are facing these problems

1):
windows is restoring buts its not booting

2)
During Linux restoring its providing source and destination after selecting the options its not moving to next step the cursor was rotating for a while and stops there.we are unable to restore linux

we tried to solve this by using by separate backup, full backups and total hard disks cloning. we changed the legacy and uefi mode options but it didn't work.

I do not believe that you can upgrade W7 32bit to W10 64bit, for free.
I would image (and verify) the W7.
If after the upgrade, if you don't like the result, you can restore the W7 and ......
I 'am an old woman', so I removed the W7 drive, and restored the W7 image into a new drive.
Then I did the upgrade.

Rob
PS If your resulting W10 is a bit flaky (because of upgrading), I read recently that you can THEN do a clean install, and W10 activation is remembered.
Once again having the original W7 drive in your underwear drawer, lets you sleep peacefully.

When you remote in, are you using the Remote Desktop Service that comes with Windows ?
If so, how does it compare to the other two I mentioned ?

Rob
PS I was speaking to someone the other day, who works at an IT company that assists other companies. He mentioned that he uses RDS if he is looking into their servers. But he uses the other two for connecting to user's PCs
PPS I have never used it, so I may have the name confused. Is Remote Assistance the same as RDS ?

I was having many issues with my desktop computer and, fortunately for me, came across Dennis' name on Google. After reading his impressive resume and some very nice comments from other customers, I decided to give him a try.

He is incredibly fast, extremely professional, reasonably priced, and I personally don't think you will find anyone more knowledgeable or more experienced than Dennis. My computer is so much faster now and even though I was doubtful about Windows 10, I know that I can ask him if I have any questions.

If you need anything done to your computer, please do not hesitate to contact Dennis. I am totally impressed and grateful and you will be too!

Thinking about upgrading to Win 10 since July of last year and reading all the articles from other subscribers finally gave me enough incentive to do it (and the July deadline was approaching)!! Having created a backup image of my PC I proceeded to download the Win 10 installation files through Windows Update. I tried the installation 5 times and it failed every time. That's when I decided to contact Dennis Faas and ask for his help. He quickly emailed me back and began the Remote Screen Connect with my PC. I was absolutely amazed when I saw how he moved so quickly through my system to figure out how he wanted to proceed! It seemed like he had 8 to 10 windows open at the same time with numerous freeware programs I had never seen or heard of before! Well, to make a long story short, Dennis took my Win 7 32-bit PC and installed Win 7 64-bit, and then installed Win 10 64-bit. While he did all that, he was making backups of all my personal files so I wouldn't lose anything! Also he checked the specs on my CPU and memory and gave me advice on what upgrades I could make so my PC would run faster. I have been using my PC for a few days now and it's running great, and after I get the parts he suggested it should be flying! Thanks Dennis!

I was a Win 7 Professional user and was getting some ntdll errors that were driving me bonkers. I’m reasonably tech saavy but wasted days trying to figure this out.
I found an article in which Dennis wrote about the error I was having – and I decided to give him a go. I hated the thought about packing up my desktop and taking it to a local shop… where it’d sit for days and I wouldn’t get any learning benefit out of what they did to fix it.

At the end of the day – Dennis quickly figured out that my Win 7 was corrupt – even though the System File Checker said everything was fine. He was able to re-install Win 7 to get it working properly, then proceeded to get me updated to Win 10.

He ran into tons of problems related to permissions – which ultimately he was able to fix.
There were many times when he’d write “ Hmmm… I’ve never seen that before… hang on…”
I wanted Win 10 to look more like Win 7 – and he had good suggestions for that in addition to other free software utilities that he installed to make it easier for him (and long-term for me).

Watching him work over your shoulder is also a good way to learn (if you can keep up with the blazing speed he works at).

I highly recommend Dennis for your PC tech needs. He’s a young guy but has loads of experience. And – he’s as tenacious as a pit bull when there’s something that isn’t “right”.

I had deep deep corruptions on my windows 10 to where my start menu, cortona, action center, Microsoft edge wouldn't work. I tried everything I could google and found no easy viable solution. I emailed Dennis and he spent almost 4 days(Friday thru mon) going through my system trying to re configure everything for it to work and he finally got it working properly and at peak performance. I cant thank Dennis enough for his help and for a FLAT, REASONABLE price agreed on prior to the job. He does great work and I recommend him to anyone who isn't knowledgeable in computers.
Thanks DENNIS,
Justin/Scott

I am so very pleased with the help that Dennis Faas provided me today. I'm really very grateful. I was a little bit hesitant to ask him for help due to the remote connection thing, but I'm so glad that I did. It is an extremely convenient way to get computer service. I had been struggling with a troublesome windows update issue after a clean installation of windows 7 on a new hard drive. I wasted MANY HOURS of my time trying to figure it out why windows was screwing up and ended up nowhere but frustrated. Dennis was able to fix my computer's problem. He's very skilled. He's fast. He's convenient. I wish I would have sought him out sooner. I'll be a repeat customer at some point, I'm sure. You can be confident in the help you'll receive from Dennis. He's the real deal. Thanks again Dennis!

My Windows 10 computer was restarting at random. Sometimes it would run for two or three days without restarting and sometimes restarting as often as 4 or 5 times a day. Very annoying to say the least. I contacted Dennis and he started diagnosing and testing right away. Several hours later when the diagnostics were completed, the problem was isolated to a memory module. A job well done and done on site. Thanks Dennis.

I have used Dennis on two occasions. I was very hesitant to initially use this service - someone having access to my computers from a faraway place! My first problem was with browsers not working properly and secondly with malware! I cannot speak highly enough of the professionalism and expertise of Dennis. Living in a remote town in outback New South Wales Australia I would have to have taken my computer to the nearest city which meant that I would have been without it for a minimum of a week with no assurance that it would have been fixed. Dennis fixed each of my problems over the Internet in less than 24 hours and I would highly recommend him. Many thanks Dennis

First, I'd like to just say how proud I am of human-kind to create technology that allows a man from Canada to assist me in Barcelona remotely on a Saturday to help fix my computer. How fantastic.

Now about Dennis. He remotely connected to my system earlier in the day, but couldn't find anything wrong. So he said to email him if anything else happens. Four hours later, the virus infection occurred again and I emailed him. Dennis responded quickly, sent me the connection link and said he'd be with me momentarily.

He was extremely methodical, asked questions and was just all-around great. He was clear when issues arose and even gave me a worst-case scenario ahead of time so I'd be prepared. He went ahead and removed that nasty bug and did all the magic he's been trained throughout the years to do.

If you were in Barcelona, I'd treat you to tapas and cava. Thanks, Dennis!

I had Dennis repair my computer via remote desktop today. I had a issue where some c++ files would not install and consequently I program that I had would not. Dennis got the necessary files installed and the program up and running.

If you are having any issues with you computer I strongly advise that you hire Dennis.
He is honest, fast and the most knowledgeable computer person that you will find.

Dennis spent a lot of time working on my corrupted Windows 10 installation. I am glad to say that after a couple of weeks the system continues to work great. Thanks Dennis! I did find your pricing to be a bit different than the prices posted here. Maybe it's time for an update? But the pricing was very fair for the service I received. I would recommend Dennis' service to anyone.

I found Dennis on the web entirely by accident and hired him to try and restore a lost email account from my Thunderbird client. I had been told by other techs it couldn't be done. Dennis did it in under an hour. I was amazed just watching him work. Several days later I had an unrelated semi-complicated internet connectivity issue, and Dennis again came through for me. Thank you so much Dennis! You're a life saver! You saved me a ton of money and time and I can't thank you enough.